Review of Triptico Plus

Today, I will be sharing more about the ICT tool, Triptico Plus (link embedded in the name).

What is Triptico Plus?

Triptico Plus is a very comprehensive ICT tool with lots of different functions that can help a teacher not just conduct the lesson in a fun and engaging manner, but also help with classroom management. While I will not be going into every aspect of Triptico Plus as there are too many features to cover, I will be highlighting one component which I think is pedagogically useful.

But first, Triptico Plus in general.

As you can see, Triptico has many different tools - "Quizzes", "Selectors", "Timers" and "Tools". Quizzes contains 10 different templates which allow teachers to create quizzes in a fun and creative way.

Selectors help teachers to make selection of students more interesting while ensuring that it is fair as it is done randomly. While there are other websites that do this function, I find it very convenient to have this tool in the same website as other tools since it is almost like a one-stop shop where I can find almost everything I need.

Timers are not anything new, but, again, it is very convenient to have this tool that I can put up on the screen and have students aware of the amount of time they have left to complete the given task.

Tools contains an assortment of things that the teacher can use for various tasks that can help with classroom management, like sorting students into random groups and even conducting a poll or creating a seating plan.

Focus: What's the Question?

I will be focusing on the quiz template "What's the Question?". This particular game requires students to formulate questions that will match the answer on the screen and is set up to be played in teams.

Uses

The most straightforward way to use this tool is to help students recall concepts, since students have to be able to recognise the concepts that are shown in order to formulate the correct type of questions. Therefore, as English Language teachers, the simplest way is to design a game around asking for concepts like definitions of grammatical components. 

However, that does not only have to be the only to use this tool to teach the English Language. Another way could be to design a game that requires students to use a particular grammatical structure to form the question in order to obtain the answer shown. Or if the teacher wants to tests the students' knowledge of idioms and/or proverbs, the teacher could have the students ask the question using the meaning of the idiom and/or proverb.

The other useful part of this tool is the scorekeeping it does automatically. This little competition it creates helps to spice things up a bit in the classroom.

Pedagogically, it reduces the monotony of teaching while also putting a spin on the lower order thinking skill of recall in Bloom's Taxonomy (Revised). The other interesting part of this game is that, since it is difficult to provide the exact same phrasing of the question which the teacher provides as the "answer", the students can discuss and debate if the phrasing of the question given by the team is appropriate or suitable before the teacher awards the points. This way, the students are given the opportunity to produce language and while also practicing their analytical and reasoning skills. 

In Singapore's context

It will be fairly easy for Singapore teachers to use this in class as the typical class size ranges from 30 to 40 students. Hence, it is possible to use this tool and in particular, the game features on it. That would definitely break the monotony of practising the four skills. 

However, I would suggest using certain of the game functions in smaller groups, possibly after school remediation lessons, where only the weaker students attend. This way, they will get to practise using English in a manner that is more engaging and interactive. Hopefully, this will increase their motivation to continue learning English. Moreover, when students are in a smaller group, there are more chances for everyone to have a say. They might also feel less self-conscious since they are among peers who are of the same level as them.

Conclusion

This particular tool requires a bit of creativity on the teacher's part when designing the game should he/she want to use it for something other than basic recall. However, that should not be a deterrence as the more creative the game, the more fun the students will have.

I hope you enjoy exploring and using Triptico Plus!